Mini Penny Blog

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

THEIRS vs MINE: Urban Renewal Lace Inset Jacket

Woohoo! I'm hoping to make this a series of posts. THEIRS vs MINE! First edition over here brings you one of my favorite shirts. See the full how-to after the jump!
For those of you who are unaware of Urban Outfitters, they have their own specific line called Urban Renewal. They do a number of things with this line. One - they make new garments of out rescued/vintage fabrics. Two - they repurpose and alter vintage/thrifted items to give them a modern cut or twist. And three - they sell thrifted items (such as sweatshirts, tees, vests) that have been picked specifically by their buyers. It's a really interesting line. Some of it is great while some of it is, well, not as great.

In comes the Urban Renewal Lace Inset Denim Jacket (normally $59-$69). Someone has posted a photo of the jacket on Tumblr and I thought, hey, I can probably make that for a lot less. I am known a lot for my choice of wearing denim-above-the-waist a lot. No, no. Never a canadian tuxedo or anything, usually a denim shirt or vest with black pants or a colorful skirt.

The denim shirt!

I picked up a Gap brand denim shirt (opted for a thinner shirt since summer is coming up) at the thrift store for $2 and a lace curtain for $1.50 and went on my way with virtually no planning whatsoever. I have a bad habit of doing this. Pardon the ugly photos. We have carpet in our apartment and we hate it. We hope this changes soon. Anyway, onto the steps...

The back of the shirt.

Flip the shirt over. I buttoned it up and made sure that it was completely flat before I started cutting. The reason that I picked this Gap shirt over some of the others was because I really liked the scalloped panel in the back. Take your fancy little scissors and cut the back panel out. I left about a quarter of an inch next to the seam so that I could fold it under and get a clean line when I sewed in the lace.

Making the lace panel.

Next I used the panel I removed as a template to cut out the lace I needed. It was super simple and I pinned it in place just to be sure. Again, I left myself some room to work.

A blurry photo. Silly iPhone!

Oh yummy, my scissors are so smooth. Anyway, I'll post something about those later. Next I pinned the lace to the jacket and used my sewing machine to make it permanent! It gets a little tricky around the collar, so be careful and use those pins! When it was all done, I cut away the extra lace and ta-da! An awesome shirt that cost me all of $3.50 and under an hour of work.